From tomorrow, that voice will boom from the pages of the Sunday Mirror as the Labour legend joins his favourite newspaper as a columnist.

John’s well aware some readers will be surprised.

“Prezza” has had a stormy relationship with the media over the years, reflected in his many nicknames.

He became “Two Jags” for owning a Jaguar and keeping another as his official ministerial car, then “Two Jabs” after throwing a left hook at a protester who pelted him with an egg on the campaign trail in 2001.

His two-year affair with former secretary Tracey Temple hit the headlines in 2006.

More recently he’s been leading the campaign for tighter Press regulation after becoming a victim of phone hacking.

John smiles wryly: “Yes, some people will think it’s ironic that I’ve joined a newspaper.

"But I know the power of good, campaigning journalism.

"Pauline and I have always read the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror and I feel proud that it’s now giving me a voice to talk to Britain about what matters.

“Since leaving government I can speak my mind like never before.

"I’d always done that in Cabinet, but in public I had to be more careful.

"There was enough of a difference between Gordon and Tony without adding in Prescott as well.

“But now I can speak for JP – and for Mirror readers. I might put a few backs up – I know I’m Marmite.

"But after 40 years in politics I think I’ve got credit – even with Tories – for telling it like it is.”

Campaigning: John outlines his plans for his new column (Photo: Andy Stenning / Daily Mirror)

We’re chatting at John’s elegant home, dubbed Prescott Towers, in Hull, where he served as MP for Hull East from 1970 to 2010.

Born in Prestatyn, North Wales, his father was a railway signalman and his mother a maid.

He failed his 11-plus and left school at 15 to train as a chef, later taking to the seas as a steward on Cunard liners and becoming an official of the National Union of Seamen.

At 18 he took up boxing and, after entering Parliament in 1970, made a name for himself as a combative opponent.

When Labour swept to power in 1997 after 18 years in opposition, Tony Blair made him his number two.

He retired as an MP in 2010 and became a peer in the House of Lords.

Now Baron Prescott of Kingston-upon-Hull in the County of East Yorkshire is ushering me into a sitting room full of family photos.

“Do you want tea, love?” he asks.

“Would you like a ham sandwich? I’ve just had stew for lunch but I can make you one.”

I settle for tea and he fetches in two mugs on saucers, deftly balancing both in one hand, still showing off his stewarding skills.

“I’ve just taken one up to Pauline,” he says.

“She’s done her knee in. We’re a right pair. I broke my ribs when we were in the Derbyshire Dales, slipped on ice hiking.”

He settles into an armchair in what he calls “Cinema Two”.

Not putting his feet up: John Prescott still has the urge to fight for what's right (Photo: Andy Stenning / Daily Mirror)

“The wife’s just got a whacking great HD TV in the other room so she can watch her programmes, Come Dancing and all them. That’s ‘Cinema One’.

John reveals he was asked to take part in Strictly Come Dancing last year.

“It’s far too tough – the time you have to put in. Vince Cable was OK – but he’s a proper dancer.

"I wasn’t going to be another Ann Widdecombe.

“They were going to ask me to go in the Jungle too. No thanks.

"They even asked the wife. But she wouldn’t go ’cos they hadn’t got an en-suite!”

John and Pauline have been married for 52 years and have two sons, David and Johnathan.

In 2001 Pauline was reunited with the teenage son she gave up for adoption, Paul, who had become a Lieutenant Colonel in the Military Police.

“He’s part of the family now,” John says proudly.

“For Pauline, well, she feels her life is complete. It’s his birthday today and she’ll be on Skype talking to him.”

John bitterly regrets the pain he put Pauline through because of his affair.

Pauline, 73, admits she will never forgive him for cheating but has accepted it was “a boy thing” not a love affair.

John still seems amazed that the scandal ever came out.

No holds barred: John Prescott punches a protester during the General Election campaign in 2001 (Photo: PA)

He said: “That woman had kept a diary of it – I was staggered.

"We had never gone out for dinners or anything – there was just these sexual encounters, but her husband found the diary and sold it.

Telling Pauline was terrible. I wasn’t even thinking about the public reaction, I was too caught up in the personal damage it had done.

“When I’d apologised to my wife I knew I had to say sorry at Conference too.

“The party has given me everything and the people who supported me were open to ridicule over me, so I owed them an apology and gave them one.”

John confesses he played up to his tough guy image and should have thought twice before flicking V-signs at reporters or being “too macho”.

“In the past I was the pantomime character you love to boo,” he said.

But he hopes, through his column, to show more of his “humorous, human self, the bloke that can take the mickey out of himself”.

John shared a very human side in 2008 when he admitted that he has battled bulimia.

John Prescott during his time as a steward and waiter in the Merchant Navy

He said: “I wanted to be honest. It’s an illness, you’re not mental or weak. No one’s ever accused me – ‘Two Jabs’ – of being weak.

“I used food to cope with stress. I was the fat bugger, the figure of fun, but I’d eat and eat, stuff a whole packet of biscuits, then another, and told myself if I expelled it, it would have no effect.

“After talking about it, the letters I got were just heart-rending – one mother said it gave her a way of getting through to her daughter.

"The girl got better, she’s an actress in the theatre and she writes to me now, too.

“And then men were writing, saying, ‘I’ve been doing that for years John, I didn’t realise it was bulimia’.

“I hope people will relate in the same way to things I write in my column.”

And will he use the column to give advice to the new Labour leader.

He grins. “I’m not going to start lecturing Ed. He’s beginning to find his way and that takes time.

“The only bit of advice I ever gave him was when he was running round in his shirt sleeves.

"I said, ‘Listen, put your bloody jacket on because people like leaders to look like leaders’.

“And so they put it to a bloody focus group, and they found the men didn’t mind but the women did.